Professor John FitzGerald:

I will do so briefly. In a paper on budget perspectives 2012 or 2013 - I have updated it since - I looked at the approach taken in Ireland and the approach taken in Spain. I think we got it broadly right. Basically, we under-promised and over-delivered whereas in the Spanish case it over promised and under delivered. We have done roughly the same and got to roughly the same position. What makes Ireland different is that the outgoing Government decided to take a pessimistic view of the public finances, three months before the election in its paper of October-November 2010, and set targets which have been difficult to reach but were politically possible so that the incoming Government was handed a plan that was deliverable within target every period. By contrast, in the Spanish case what happened was that the outgoing government continually raised the bar and promised it would get the deficit down to 3% even faster, something the incoming government finds it is impossible to achieve. People say Ireland meets its targets and Spain does not. It mirrors what happened in 1986, 1987 and 1988 where the political system across party boundaries delivered a resolution which produced a better adjustment for Ireland. The bailout in terms of the plan was an Irish plan developed by an Irish Government. The troika bought into it and said it was okay. The incoming Government said it did not like features of it and the troika agreed that so long it stuck to the broad parameters it could change it. That is what has happened.

I can go a lot further down this route but it would take the committee a long way from where it wants to be.